


give the bruises out like gifts

by roseisreturning



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1950s, Alternate Universe - Criminals, Alternate Universe - Historical, F/F, Femslash February Trope Bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-02-28
Packaged: 2018-03-15 18:29:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3457376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseisreturning/pseuds/roseisreturning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This is when her girls start talking, leaning on the hood of your new car, sunrise like an oil spill on it, and twice as deadly. They smile, still, red lips and bruised knuckles, and one of them says, 'She’s real gone, Joan. Be a crime not to tell ya.'" Written for the "au: historical" space on my femtropebingo card.</p>
            </blockquote>





	give the bruises out like gifts

**Author's Note:**

> i've literally watched one episode from season three and read about as many fics so i have no clue if i am writing this at all well? but, um, criminal girlfriends... is.. important..... i don't know, but you can probably tell that the only literature i have on the fifties is about fashion, whoops! enjoy, i guess!  
> warning: some violence and death mention, but nothing graphic

You know Moriarty as anyone does, the carefully-left traces of whoever it is.

Hair, blonde. Eighteen centimeters. Straight, for the most part, end barely curled.

Girls, aged nineteen to twenty-five. Ambitious but quiet things, Fiona Campbell-Walter devotees in Cristobal Balenciaga and red lipstick, sitting on beaches in bikinis, saying just enough about her to keep it interesting.

 _Her—_ this is the first time they’ve let you know this, let Moriarty become anything but a proper noun, and you savor the knowledge briefly, satisfied for the second.

You don’t blame her, Moriarty, for keeping herself hidden. Secrecy is a friend to you, too, even now, and you think there is something to it in taking it for your own.

She was a hit man, at first, and you think this is true.

(She’s most things she’s meant to be, you think, in some way, and you fall, somehow, strangely, in love with these people.)

A man, first, an Ivy Leaguer in Ivy Leaguers, tired of the family, of some promise of greatness, set out to make his own, to rebel in corduroys and blood. A girl, jerking him around, next, looking for something to fill her summers, signing it all off with an _M_.

So, you become her, unconsciously, steal bigger and bigger, and say it’s something like Robin Hood. (You were poor in the beginning, at least, before you got good.)

This is when her girls start talking, leaning on the hood of your new car, sunrise like an oil spill on it, and twice as deadly. They smile, still, red lips and bruised knuckles, and one of them says, “She’s real gone, Joan. Be a crime not to tell ya.”

“You’d know a crime.”

The girls stand up a little straighter, and you think they’re bracing themselves for a fight. You don’t fight, when you’ve got the choice. Too much risk, too little reward. The girls haven’t learned this yet, the calculation in this, but it’s something you were born for. (Something she was born for, you think, but you remind yourself you do not know her.)

Moriarty finds you two towns over in as many weeks, letter left on your windshield, name in letters curling just at the ends, like her hair. _Joan Watson._

_I’ll meet you at six._

Three folds, top to bottom. Slight fold, bottom right, probably from her writing it.  No location, but a kiss just below the words, then, naturally, _M_ , large and swirling.

You pull up behind last night’s visit—closed, Sunday afternoon, peaceful, intrusion not yet noticed—and rest quietly in your back seat, waiting for her.

“Joan,” she says on her arrival, voice cool and smooth and foreign, as much a gun as the piece held to her side. “It’s good to see you.”

You’ve got the choice, and you hit her.

There’s reward here, you think, and this is what you bet on.


End file.
